How to find my passion

How do we discover our passion, find our purpose, cultivate a life mission, create an ikigai, develop a techne, craft our why... or any other variation on the above?

Glad you asked!

Question 1:

Let's say I gave you a billion dollars, and five million dollars a month after that for life. What would you do?

(actually think and answer that)

If you're like most people, your answer was scarcity/fear-based. You'd pay off all your bills, buy your parents a house, travel the world, buy something expensive, spend a lot of time on a beach etc.

Okay, cool. Got that out of your system?

Question 2:

What would you do after that?

This question is a bit trickier. Again, if you're like most people, you'll jump to guilt/contribution, and talk about charities that you'd donate the money to, who you'd help with the money and so on.

Awesome. Nearly there.

Question 3:

After that... what would you do?

This is generally where the question gets a bit trickier for people. This is when money is no longer considered. You have all the things you want, and you've done all the adventures you've craved. You've helped people out financially, and you...

What?

What do you do?

Do you start a film company? Become a photographer? Do you sculpt? Practice magic?

At some point, in your huge mansion surrounded by supermodels and diamond-encrusted goblets you're going to have to DO something with your time.

What do you do?

...

Write those things down.

If this question doesn't quite resonate with you, here's a different angle:

Poof! Holy cow, everyone on the planet is gone except you! You have all the food, water and supplies you could ever need, and nobody's coming to get you... What do you do all day?

Question 4:

Why? Take the core elements of those things - for example, let's say you wanted to play D&D all day, every day. Great. Why? What about that activity lights your fire? Is it creating the characters? The dice? Is it the connection with the other players, or the plotlines? What about that activity is it that lights you on fire?

Question 5:

What other things have those core elements you've discovered?

If it was the plot lines, what else has that? Script writing? Book writing? What else?

Exercise 1:

Now that you have all the elements required, there is an exercise to partake in. I like to use the analogy of breathing, or "the big bang" - the compression and expansion of an idea around a singular point.

Here's how it goes: Breathing out, you contract one of the ideas you've come up with down to smaller and smaller pieces until you start using core "identity words" that you would consider being your center point. Eg "explorer" or "tinkerer" or "entertainer" etc.

An example of this could be thinking you might want to be a soldier, and refining down to the core identity you associate with that job. Is it "savior"? "badass"? "bully"? "general"? What is the actual identifier you associate with that choice?

This is the breathing out, or the "contraction of the universe down to a single point" for you to experiment with, within the breathing.

Once you have that "identity" to explore, expand back outwards (breath in, or the big bang), and think about what sorts of activities house that identity well, holding your breath.

So, to use the soldier example above, if you chose "badass" then you might think of UFC fighter, policeman, fireman, stuntman, etc.

Latch on to one that sounds good, and explore THAT as the new focus point. What is the identity of THAT person/activity? What is the core attribute associated with THAT?

So, to use the above example, let's say you chose stuntman, and when you breathed that out into its core identity you actually come up with "showboat" - cool, then expand that back out again and see what pops up for you there (eg "competition gymnast" or whatever)

Repeat this process, again and again, taking note of overlaps. You'll discover that all the things that really interest you have these 4 key things in them. They might be feelings, identities, activities - could be anything. The point is, there'll be an overlap.

Exercise 2:

Take this list and ask yourself this question: Which one of these things do I want to be the best in the world at? Which one of these things could I dedicate myself to, and enjoy the process, win or lose, every day? Which of these things could I absolutely love, regardless of the outcome?

Could you sing every day, and even if you never got the record deal, still be happy?

Exercise 3:

In the realm of.

Now, take all of these pieces, and think about "in the realm of" - eg let's say you LOVE basketball, and are 4' tall. Cool. Could you be the head of the marketing department for the NBA? Could you design technology for the NBA? There are thousands of "in the realm of" that could light you on fire.

Exercise 4:

Skillset.

Take an honest look at your skills. Where are you now? Do you have any of the skills you need to begin your journey down this path? Do you have any "early wins" in any areas that might help you out?

There is no shame in saying no, as long as the thought of dedicating yourself to learning those skills lights you on fire.

Still not quite sure what your ikigai is?

Let's say you've broken everything down into multiple categories, ideologies, ideas and motivations, but still haven't turned that into a burning passion to solve a specific problem, or found a specific modality to drive your passionate bod around. No biggie, here's another thing you can do:

Combine things together in weird ways and see what happens.

Take "Likes to create things" and "likes to organize things". Let's say you had those, okay? Well, that could be combined into Create/Organize (eg you could become a consultant or efficiency expert, someone who creates ways to organize) or, you could combine it as an Organize/Create, which would be someone who wants to organize creativity - say, the creator of YouTube, who effectively just figured out a way to organize other people's creativity, or, someone who creates mind map software etc.

Combine things in weird ways, and see what happens.

IF THAT DOESN'T WORK

Pick one.

Seriously, just pick one and move at 1000mph towards that goal, and learn along the way. You can always pivot and change course. Look at Steve Jobs' commencement speech. He didn't know that diving into fonts would somehow relate to creating the mac, and he certainly didn't that path would somehow lead him to reshaping the music industry.

So just pick one, and be on the lookout for a problem worthy of you.

...Still here?

A'ight, how 'bout this? C3GUS is a thing, right? Pick one of the six needs and ask yourself which one you want to target and magnify for the entire population of the planet. Imagine you could wave a magic wand and the world would instantly and dramatically improve in one of the below categories. Which one speaks to you the most?

Contribution - do you want everyone banning together and helping those who need helping? Do you want charity to be on everyone's mind? Why?

Growth - do you think that if everyone knew growth was possible, that they would grow? Do you think people only reach for the branches they can see and not enough people see the branches? (psst read "why I do this") Why?

Uncertainty - do you think that variety is the spice of life and not enough people enjoy the meal? Do you think entertainment is the solution to a problem? Do you think that if life were more exciting in some way it would make the world better? Why?

Significance - do you think that if people believed in themselves they would achieve more? Do you have a way to pick people up out of their self-imposed trenches? Why?

So, you've got a thing now. You have to. Now all you need is the first step. Ideally, you have an end goal in mind, but even if you don't, you have a general feeling to shoot towards maximizing for the world.

What's the first step?

"Maybe learning something about-" NO! Learning is fine, but doing is what we're after. Learning about financials so that you can WHAT?